Mad Cow Disease In Texas Man Has Mysterious Origin - This should be one to watch!

Colored brain scan of a 17-year-old boy with mad cow disease. The bright yellow spots are a sign that the thalamus is damaged by diseased proteins.

Source

It began with anxiety and depression. A few months later, hallucinations appeared.

Then the Texas man, in his 40s, couldn't feel or move the left side of his face.

He thought the symptoms were because of a recent car accident. But the psychiatric problems got worse. And some doctors thought the man might have bipolar disorder.

An autopsy confirmed what doctors had finally suspected: mad cow disease.*

The case, published Wednesday in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, is only the fourth one diagnosed in the U.S. In those previous cases, people caught the disease in another country.

This article is REALLY interesting. They go through what they have done to track down where they think the infection actually started, and they believe it was 14 ears ago when the man lived in the UK. He got it from some tainted meat.

The source of the infection in Texas is less clear, says Dr. Atul Maheshwari, a neurologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Maheshwari was one of the doctors who took care of the patient with mad cow disease, and he led the study.

The patient had lived in the U.S. for 14 years before becoming sick. Maheshwari says he most likely didn't catch the disease here. The country has recorded only a handful of mad cow cases in cattle since it began testing in 2003. And the U.S. didn't import contaminated beef from the U.K.

So Maheshwari and his team started tracking down where their patient had lived decades earlier, when the U.K. was exporting dangerous meat.

So...I wonder how many are out there that ate this same meat that are just ticking their clocks down and about to die. If this thing has a 14 year gestation period before death, then who knows how many could have been infected.

My big problem is that I have always been under the impression Mad Cow could not transfer to humans, yet this article states 4 cases. And they think this was from infection 14 years ago...how many people world wide could have been infected 14 years ago from tainted meat? Wonder if we will see a sudden increase in people dying from this in the next year?

Mad cow disease has been with us for hundreds, possibly thousands of years...no need to worry.

That is scary!

It seems as if what we both thought to be true is now not.

Definately one to keep an eye on.

I wonder if there's a test one could take to be "proactive"?
I will read the full article. Thanks!

Reading up on it from the CDC:

Source

This doesn't give me warm fuzzies:

There exists strong epidemiologic and laboratory evidence for a causal association between a new human prion disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) that was first reported from the United Kingdom in 1996 and the BSE outbreak in cattle. The interval between the most likely period for the initial extended exposure of the population to potentially BSE-contaminated food (1984-1986) and the onset of initial variant CJD cases (1994-1996) is consistent with known incubation periods for the human forms of prion disease.

So apparently you could have caught it 10 or more years ago and are just now finding out....that is a LONG incubation period!

Here are the stats in North America up to February 2015:



The source of these is pretty informative, but does not make me feel any better since they state the incubation period is so long....who knows who may just be walking around with it. I haven't found anything that says it can be transferred from human to human though.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I remember when it was first found in the UK. Late 80s early 90s. This was my first experience of a media led moral panic.

Everybody stopped eating beef.

I had the fear, in ten years will I be mad?

I think it was fear mongering.

Not all carriers develop symptoms

a reply to: Vasa Croe

It always amuses me that CJD is portrayed as mainly a British thing. The simple fact is that CJD is prwesent in every nation that adopted "factory farming" and is a direct effect from lower immune defences from the factory farming processes.

In point of fact, there is actually circumstantial evidence to suggest that only Britain has acknolwedged the full extent of the problem.

For example, US authorities said there was no problem with mad cows in the US......and then stated that cattle had already been infected.

And there are also THOUSANDS of "Downer Cows" in this country, cows that are well one day and dead the next. When these "Downer Cows" are ground up and fed to other animals, the other animals develop the equivalent of Mad Cow Disease. So the government, as always, is talking out of both sides of their mouth. They are protecting the gigantic billion dollar meat and poultry industry rather than the American people.

The same argument was levelled by the UK Government in the EU Parliament to other member states....basically that at least we are recognising there is a problem and not hushing it up.

Long story short, not a good idea to ground dead cattle up to feed to other cattle, particularly when all are being raised through "factory farming" methods.

originally posted by: and14263
a reply to: Vasa Croe

I remember when it was first found in the UK. Late 80s early 90s. This was my first experience of a media led moral panic.

Everybody stopped eating beef.

I had the fear, in ten years will I be mad?

I think it was fear mongering.

Not all carriers develop symptoms

Oh...I don't doubt that it was fear mongering, but I do wonder, based off this last case, how many were infected and will be popping up in the near future. Surely it could not have only been those few cases, or this single guy in TX that got it.

First of all let me say, like most I have been conditioned to eat meat. I eat meat.

burnt dead flesh

originally posted by: intrptr
First of all let me say, like most I have been conditioned to eat meat. I eat meat.

burnt dead flesh

LOL...

Yep....I don't think I could go without!

a reply to: Vasa Croe

It seems like one of those diseases that could be misdiagnosed as something else because the doctors might not suspect Mad Cow Disease. Alo, not a good thing if it can be gotten through eating infected meat, of which there has been a lot of, apparently.

I'm still going to eat beef.......from people I know and prepared at a local meat market. There have always been problems in eating any foods mass prepared by giant corporations, plant and animal. While some are more severe than others, it's the giant corporations that have more problems than the small time producer.

It is strange to have such a lengthy period between infection and symptom effects. I sure wouldn't want that disease and if I were diagnosed with it, lets just say I wouldn't let myself 'linger' that long.

originally posted by: Soloprotocol
Mad cow disease has been with us for hundreds, possibly thousands of years...no need to worry.

And then there's the ever-popular Kuru.

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: Vasa Croe

It seems like one of those diseases that could be misdiagnosed as something else because the doctors might not suspect Mad Cow Disease. Alo, not a good thing if it can be gotten through eating infected meat, of which there has been a lot of, apparently.

Yes, there was a thread a few weeks or so ago about the rise of MS in Canada, also highlighting a rise in cases more so in the northern hemisphere if I remember correctly.

It maybe being misdiagnosed and we are at the tip of a very large iceberg.

Who knows?

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: Vasa Croe

It seems like one of those diseases that could be misdiagnosed as something else because the doctors might not suspect Mad Cow Disease. Alo, not a good thing if it can be gotten through eating infected meat, of which there has been a lot of, apparently.

Yeah, I think the same. As with many not often seen diseases, I am sure this could be misdiagnosed since those giving the treatment likely have never seen it before.

originally posted by: StoutBroux
I'm still going to eat beef.......from people I know and prepared at a local meat market. There have always been problems in eating any foods mass prepared by giant corporations, plant and animal. While some are more severe than others, it's the giant corporations that have more problems than the small time producer.

It is strange to have such a lengthy period between infection and symptom effects. I sure wouldn't want that disease and if I were diagnosed with it, lets just say I wouldn't let myself 'linger' that long.

Yeah....me too. We go in with a couple neighbors every so often and get a whole cow butchered by a local trusted shop and stock our freezers. Locally raised cows on organic farms and well cared for.

And yeah, I agree that the incubation period is REALLY long. I would guess that would be another reason it would be hard to diagnose since the patient would likely never associate something they ate 10-14 years ago to a health issue they are seeing a doc for today. The likely line of questioning would be to look at something in the last couple of months that they did.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

some more meat er bamboo er wasabi er oh carrot to chew on

www.mad-cow.org...

www.oie.int...

www.cdc.gov...

horizontal transmission check
vertical transmission check
blood transfusion highly likely

regards fakedirt.

originally posted by: fakedirt
a reply to: Vasa Croe

some more meat er bamboo er wasabi er oh carrot to chew on

www.mad-cow.org...

www.oie.int...

www.cdc.gov...

horizontal transmission check
vertical transmission check
blood transfusion highly likely

regards fakedirt.

Wow...that second link with the chart is crazy to look at. The rise of cases in the 90's was insane.

a reply to: StoutBroux

I'm still going to eat beef.......from people I know and prepared at a local meat market.

It's not the meat you eat today but the meat you ate over the last 20 years you need to worry about

originally posted by: woodwardjnr
a reply to: StoutBroux

I'm still going to eat beef.......from people I know and prepared at a local meat market.

It's not the meat you eat today but the meat you ate over the last 20 years you need to worry about

Yeah. That also makes me wonder if the cases they found in the UK in humans during the 90's were possibly from being ingested years earlier. Wonder if we are in for another death jump from this. While I am not worried about it myself, if the deaths start to add up I guess we will know.

Two cows are standing in a field when the first cow turns and says to the other, "What do you make of this Mad Cow Disease?". The second cow retorts "It doesn't bother me, I'm a squirrel."